Tom Pagdin’s crooked forefinger closed on the trigger. The sharp cr-r-rack of the Winchester was answered by a howl of pain from Jean Petit.

The bullet had penetrated the fleshy part of his arm.

Tom wrenched back the lever, ejected the smoking shell, slid another cartridge out of the magazine into the barrel, and lifted the rifle to his shoulder again.

Petit, taken by surprise, had pulled up short.

The unexpected had happened!

“Shoot him in the stummick!” yelled Dave. “Shoot him in the stummick, Tom!”

The love of war is in our Australian youth. When first the Colonial troops rode on to the veldt, seasoned British veterans admitted this.

The first mate had armed himself with a paddle, and was standing behind his chief waving his clubbed oar above his head in a state of great excitement. He shouted defiance at Petit, and wildly urged Tom to kill the latter without benefit of clergy.

George Chard and Dan Creyton, hearing the shot[177] and the shouting, were running in the direction of the boat.

Tom covered Petit with the Winchester.

They were not twenty yards apart.

The expression on the convict’s face as he grasped the situation would under ordinary circumstances have turned the pirates cold.

But a bush boy of thirteen with a loaded Winchester at full cock and a grievance such as Tom Pagdin was labouring under, had to be reckoned with.

Bang! went the rifle.

Petit leaped into the air like a kangaroo which had been shot through the body by a Martini, and sprang into the scrub.

At the same moment Dan and George broke into sight through the jungle.

“After him!” yelled Tom.

He re-charged his rifle as he ran, with Dave close at his heels.

“Look out!” cried Dave, frantically waving and shouting to the two strangers. “Head him off!”

At that moment Petit, twice wounded, desperate, and murderous, hurled himself upon Dan and attempted to seize his shot gun.

Dan was an athlete, but this unexpected attack took him at a disadvantage. He stumbled, caught his foot in a vine, and fell backwards.

The gun was loaded with number six shot in both barrels.

Dan Creyton’s hand was on the triggers and as he went down the two charges exploded, tearing out the[178] twigs and scattering green perforated leaves in the air overhead.

As Dan Creyton fell, George threw himself upon Petit.

The frenzied convict fought and struggled like a mad lion.

He was more than a match for them both. Besides, this unexpected development of a morning’s peaceful sport had taken them completely by surprise.

They did not know whether their assailant was an escaped lunatic, a murderer, or a law-abiding citizen, who was labouring under an impression that he had struck an island of homicides. The question was, who was justified? They had heard the shots fired and the shouting, but they were absolutely ignorant of the meaning of it all.

However, the average Anglo-Saxon does not pause to reason about things when he is attacked—he hits out.

They struggled with the escapee, who knew his only chance of making things even was to get possession of a gun. Escape from the island, his instinct told him, had been cut off. He was in a tight place, wounded and must kill and smash a way out. One murder more or less did not matter to him. He fought for a little longer life, a few hours’ further liberty—that was all. He bled, but he did not feel his wounds. Tom’s bullets had not hit him in any vital part of the body.

Dan Creyton was stunned by the force of the fall, by the weight of the aggressor, and by Petit’s rapid blows.

Trapped at last.

Tom Pagdin, Pirate. Page 179.

[179]

The convict shook himself free from them as an infuriated boar will shake off a brace of dogs, seized the empty fowling piece by the muzzle, and swung it aloft to club out George Chard’s brains.

George, piecing rapid events together afterwards, remembered that a wild-eyed youth, armed with Dan’s rifle, suddenly appeared on the scene, followed by a red-headed youth waving an oar.

The boys sprang out of the scrub right behind Petit. George, whose head was in a whirl, declared that the red-headed boy brought the oar down with all the strength he was capable of on the convict’s neck, and that the gun flew out of the latter’s hands, and the stock struck him (George) on the side of the head.

The next minute the other boy was holding the muzzle of a smoking rifle to the prostrate convict’s ear, and inviting Dan and George to get up and bind that person, and making all sorts of statements and charges against the prostrate man’s history and character.

“Get the painter out of the boat!” cried Tom to Dave. “Move as much as an eye-lid,” he observed to Petit, “an’ I’ll shoot the top of your skull acrost the bloomin’ river!”

Petit was dazed. He did not offer to move.

“There’s ten shots in her yet,” Tom informed the prostrate foe, “an’ I’m too close to miss yer. I’ve got a little account with yer, any’ow. That knife ain’t no good to you no more,” he added sarcastically, “I got a better kind of knife to-day.”

He pressed the muzzle of the rifle closer against[180] Petit’s ear to assure him that he was stating facts.

The argument was convincing. Petit looked perfectly diabolical, but he did not offer to put Tom’s repeated promises of blowing his head off to the test.

Dave came running back from the boat, breathless, with the painter in his hand.

“Make a slip knot in it,” ordered Tom, who had assumed control of the proceedings. It was his hand, and he meant to see it played.

“Put his hands behind his back!” he ordered, “draw it tight!”

George found himself obeying, without further question, the orders of the strange wild-looking youth, who seemed to have good and valid reasons for all he was saying and doing.

“Tighter!” cried the pirate captain; “draw it as tight as it will go. Don’t be afraid of hurtin’ him!”

“No,” said Dave who was buzzing round; “don’t trouble about him, he didn’t trouble about us, nor anybody else.”

“Now, Sour Krout,” cried Tom, when he had seen the murderer’s hands securely bound behind his back, “I’m goin’ to walk be’ind yer with this Winchester till I see you into the lock-up.”

Dan Creyton, recovering from his stupor, sat up on the leaves. The whole thing looked like a dream to him. He was trying to collect events and identities. George was on his knees beside him, inquiring if he were hurt.

“No,” said Dan slowly; “not hurt much; I think[181] no bones broken. But what is it? What’s all this about? Somebody fell on me, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” said Tom, grimly; “somebody did. If you knew as much about him as we do you’d reckon you was lucky you ain’t got a knife in your neck.”

“He would, too,” corroborated Dave, “only I see ’im drop it when you fired the first shot.”

“I must ’a’ hit him then,” said Tom, in a glad voice. “I knowed I couldn’t ’a’ missed him clean at that distance. Why it wasn’t more’n fifty yards at the outside, an’ I killed a wallaby with a pea-rifle at fifty five.”

“Yes,” said Dave, “he’s hit on the arm; see the blood on his shirt.”

Petit scowled.

“What is the meaning of all this?” demanded Dan Creyton, rising painfully to his feet.

Petit broke into a torrent of words. He declared, in rapid, broken English, that he had been attacked by the two boys—they were his children by adoption. They had run away, he was following them; they had turned upon him, fired at him, and wounded him in two places. He had leaped upon the strangers not knowing where he was going or what he was doing, thinking, too, that they had joined the attack. He was innocent of all things. Let them release him at once; dreadful punishment would be meted out to them if they persisted. It was murder, outrage, against the law of the country. Would these gentlemen countenance such things? Compel that boy to remove the[182] firearm; it might go off—then they would all be hung for murder. Let them untie the bonds at once.

“Hold on!” interrupted Tom Pagdin, turning to George and Dan. “I got something to say, too. I got,” he began, stepping back three or four paces, but still aiming at Petit’s head, “that is, me an’ my mate, ’as got to turn Queen’s evidence. We got to do it some time, so we might as well do it at onct an’ have done with it.”

“Say,” he went on, “have either of you chaps got a Bible on you?”

George shook his head. Dan regarded Tom with an air of attention, almost of respect. With returning perception he saw that there was something important behind all this—that some mystery was going to be cleared up, and instinctively he connected the group before him with the bank robbery—the murder, perhaps.

“No,” said Dan, humouring the boy, “neither of us carry Testaments about with us when we go shooting.............